Tom Elliott explains why the government deserves criticism over vouchers bungle

Tom Elliott says the government let Victorians down badly with Friday’s website crash that saw it become virtually impossible to secure lucrative $200 regional travel vouchers to help kickstart the state’s tourism industry on the back of COVID-19.

He said it’s not good enough.

The heavily-anticipated voucher launch on Friday morning was nothing short of a disaster, with the Business Victoria website plagued with technology problems.

“They should have known,” the 3AW Drive host said on Friday.

“If you effectively announce free money for people, the demand will be enormous and enormous it was and the thing did not work.

“It’s simply unacceptable.”

Tom Elliott said the concept, while good in theory, had now left people angry.

“You can’t sit there and want the political kudos saying – ‘aren’t we wonderful, here’s a lovely present for Christmas, go away and enjoy yourselves’ – and then not be able to follow through when you’ve had plenty of time,” he explained.

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Dr Suelette Dreyfus, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne, said it looked as though the government had underestimated demand.

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